By Trac y Render
We’ve know for a long time open spaces and our park are the perfect places to maintain well being and mental health. The friends of Wickford Memorial Park are passionate about our park for all ages. The group and volunteers and park staff work in all weathers for the community. We have been lucky to secure funding from different organisations to improve and enhance the park with wild flower meadows, and the newly created Beauchamps Meadow. This was once the schools playing fields and is now becoming a nature reserve but still maintaining walks and paths for exercise and a stroll. A community orchard has also just been planted.
The wildflower meadow, with bug hotels and wooden tree stumps is another enclosed area for picnics, story telling or just to sit and watch the flowers, especially lovely as the sun goes down in the summer.
The park hosts Parkrun every Saturday along with exercise equipment installed in the park, with wheel chair access, tennis court, basket ball court and football fields, cricket pitch and bowling club. Mini crazy golf and enclosed children’s playgrounds.
And who doesn’t enjoy resting with a cuppa, a cake or your lunch. Huttons cafe in the park also offers takeaway meals with great access from the car park into the cafe for wheelchairs.
There’s is also the river to walk along the entire length of the park towards battlesbridge , although currently there is no bridge to link the walk into battlesbridge through the park.
We are currently finishing a Reflection Garden thats dedicated for the young people and families of the town as a space for a rest a reset and reflection and for all visitors to enjoy, sponsored by the Community Lottery Fund.
We hope you’ve enjoyed the progress so far. Benches and more planting will be coming in the next few weeks, community planting events will be posted and we are connecting with schools and engaging students beginning with Hilltop and Beauchamps.
Many other areas in the park can be enjoyed with paths around the perimeter it makes it accessible all year.
We run our gardening groups every Wednesday and Saturday mornings if you’d like to come along, no gardening experience necessary and tasks for all abilities.
Many people over the years have undertaken to provide a central park for the town, a memorial to those who lost their lives during the war and now new generations maintaining, respecting and enhancing the park for future generations.